Masks of Beauty
by Aiur
Summary: Severa has finally married her childhood crush, but conflict between the masks they wear might drive them apart before they are ever truly together.


Disclaimer: The Fire Emblem Awakening setting and characters belong to Intelligent Systems and Nintendo.

A/N: This story is very graphic despite remaining within the FFN guidelines; however, if sexual content offends you, I discourage you from reading any further.

* * *

It had started out as a purely physical attraction, so she could not deny that she was excited that this day had finally arrived. The feeling of his body so incredibly enmeshed with hers was somewhat painful, but was becoming rapidly less so.

"Gawds, Gerome… keep going…" Severa managed to say between low moans.

She remembered the first time she met him, thirteen years ago – at least, in her personal time line. His face was beautiful, with soft lines similar to his mother's, but a strong and square jaw like his strange-tongued father. His hair shared the same auburn complexion, but it was permanently slicked back from the rides his mother would let him take on Minerva. Severa was too young for sexual attraction to develop then, of course, but a self-aware girl such as herself had known then and there that Gerome was a _cute_ boy.

Her reminiscence was cut abruptly short as Gerome slightly shifted the angle of his hips, dropping them somewhat lower and picking her up off their marital bed effortlessly with his massive upper body, causing him to hit her in such a way that all thoughts except for the here and now promptly escaped her attention.

"Right there! Gawds, don't you dare stop!"

Severa opened her eyes, wanting to take in the face she had always thought was so handsome, and that was now uncovered – of course – only for her. His face above her was flushed, although hers was probably not much better off. His eyes were closed in concentration and although part of her wanted to scream at him for not looking at her, she was actually a bit relieved. Stripping down before this was more embarrassing than she would ever admit and Gerome not looking at her honestly allowed her to enjoy the moment more.

There would be plenty of time in the future to look at each other; for exploring. Tonight was about cementing a bond that had formed gradually; at first through fleeting encounters during a nightmarish and gory childhood, then through the trust that only mutual respect on the battlefield could bring, and finally through the emotional process of opening themselves up to each other. Openness had been hard for them; each had their own masks to protect themselves from the outside world and the dangers of having loved ones who might be taken at any minute. Severa liked to think that their obvious physical attraction for each other had helped the process along, rather than being the sole basis for their now official.

"Severa, I think I'm–"

"It's okay, Gerome, do it!" Severa shouted, feeling the unstoppable frenzy of climax rapidly approaching within her. She closed her eyes in anticipation, wanting to savor the feeling. Gerome might finish before her, but only just, and then–

Everything stopped. The sensation was gone. His hands still gripped her just above her hips, but their connection was gone.

Then she felt a splatter of warmth across her stomach, stopping at the bottom of her sternum between her breasts. A few more splatters hit lower, near her belly button, and then it was over.

Severa opened her eyes, hoping to Naga that they showed all of the anger she currently felt.

"Gerome, what the hell was that?!" Severa screamed. She was beyond angry, she was furious.

Gerome looked at her somewhat incredulously, and answered with a dopily satisfied but still questioning grunt.

This only served to transform her furiousness into pure rage.

"Wipe that smile off!" Severa yelled as she violently pushed him as far away from her as she could. To her satisfaction, his smile rapidly disappeared and was replaced by confusion and hurt. She could not bring herself to care about his feelings at the moment, though; her feelings had been violated first.

"Severa, I don't understand… I thought you were enjoying yourself?" Gerome said to her calmly, his face now locked down in an emotionless mask she had come to recognize as his attempt to hide internal turmoil. Severa knew better, and even though she knew that this was not how a married couple's first night together should go, she couldn't stop herself from venting the incredible ire she now felt towards her new husband.

"Of course I was enjoying myself, you imbecile! All the way to the end, when you pulled out and finished on my stomach!" Severa shouted while wiping the mess on her stomach onto her hand and flinging her hand towards him with such brutality that some stuck onto the face that she still loved so much it hurt.

To his credit, Gerome did not even flinch in response to her outburst, but his eyebrows did crease as he processed her words. He wiped his face slowly.

"Where else was I supposed to… finish, then?" he asked her with such a nonchalant tone that she realized with absolute horror that he meant every word of it, and had planned on doing this from the beginning. She had a terrible feeling that she knew why, too.

Deep down, she wanted to cry. Now especially, though, she could _not_ do that. She needed to hear the answer out of his lips, even if she would hate it. So she did what she really didn't want to do, and screeched at her husband some more.

"Oh, I don't know Gerome, _dear_" she said with as much sarcasm as she could possibly muster, which she was not so proud to say was a colossal amount. "Maybe _inside_ me, like any normal married couple! What the _fuck_ were you thinking?"

"…" was all that followed. The silence was deafening. Eventually a deep sigh escaped out of Gerome's mouth.

"Don't make me pry it out of you, Gerome. You do _not_ want to be even worse off with me than you already are." Severa tried to put as much threat into her voice as she had sarcasm earlier, but her exasperation was dissolving and she was having a hard time keeping the tears out of her voice, even if her eyes were dry.

"I thought you of all people would understand, Severa." There was still zero emotion in Gerome's voice, a stark contrast to the playful flirtations and impassioned grunts from earlier that day. "We don't belong here, in this time. Our world is gone, and our places in time and space with it. Our very existence here and now is a violation of the natural order of things, and I don't want to complicate it any more than necessary."

Severa's heart shattered. She should have seen it coming. She _did_ know him, definitely better than anyone else in this world. His biological parents had only known him for a few months, and his chronological parents had been dead for almost a decade. He was always the lone wolf of their group after that. That was when he had first put his mask on outside of playing Justice Cabal with the others.

When Lucina had first proposed the Awakening and pleading to Naga to send them back in time to try to make a difference, he had been the only one that opposed the decision on logical grounds. Everyone assumed that it would have been Laurent, but he ironically saw it as the only logical solution. Gerome was different, though. He thought deeper than the others, even deeper than Laurent, but she doubted the others noticed. Laurent could think scientifically, but he never really _understood_ things like Gerome. It was yet another thing that attracted her to him. And now it made her want to smack him. Hard.

"I don't get it, Gerome" she said coldly. "Sure, when we first agreed to come back, you said you would only interfere minimally. You were worried about causality, I get that." She left a small pause accompanied by a glare, showing that she certainly did not 'get' it. "But I _know_ you've changed since then. You met your parents from this timeline, and you got to know them. They have accepted you here. More than that, all of our parents are _grateful _that we came back, and Naga sure doesn't seem to mind! I don't see space-time or whatever contorting at our mere presence! Like it or not, we are stuck in this world, so we might as well make the best of it! Gawds, why did you even agree to marry me if you didn't want to start a family? Just so we could _fuck_?"

The last question finally did it, and a tear rolled down Severa's cheek. She did not sob, but she still felt all the shame she associated with showing weakness well up in her still-naked chest. She crossed her arms over herself, and looked away uncomfortably. She should have known that this was too good to be true. She blamed herself for never asking him outright if he _wanted_ a family despite what she knew of his minimal interference policy. She had let herself be drawn in by his beautiful body, and after some prodding, by his unmasked face. She should have realized that he was not as committed to this as she was when _she_ had been the one to propose after Grima had been slain, even if he did get her a beautiful ring later that day.

Beauty; their whole relationship had been about beauty. They were beautiful people, and that was it. She had let herself get whisked away by a childhood crush that she thought was something more. She–

"Severa."

Gerome's voice was very different now. It was contorted and disfigured with pain. She still did not want to look at him, but she could not stop herself; he had never shown that much emotion before, even when saying their vows, which had been more heartfelt than she had imagined they would be.

His face was a mess. Far from her lone tear of shame and anger, his once beautiful face was marred by multiple cascading trails from the corners of his eyes. He was grimacing, and looked to be in more pain than when she had failed to guard him from a Rexcalibur spell that had nearly severed Minerva's wing and taken his leg with it. Her heart broke again, this time for a completely different reason – even if their relationship had been a farce, her feelings for him were true, and as strong as ever. She would not be able to let them go that easily.

"You know that you mean more than that to me, Severa. You mean everything to me; you give my tortured existence in this world purpose!" Gerome's voice was raw with emotion, deep and gravely. "How am I supposed to be so careless about how we interact with this illusory world? We aren't supposed to _exist_ here, especially now that our purpose has been fulfilled… What if we've altered events so that our parents conceive on a different date? Will we cease to exist? If you happen to be pregnant at that time, what would happen to our child? Would a child conceived in this world to parents whose existence is conditional be forced to grow up in suffering without parents, like we did, or would it simply cease to exist without ever having a chance at life? … I love you, Severa, and I want to stay in this world with you as long as I possibly can, but I can't justify bringing another life into the world with so many uncertainties."

At this point, Severa did finally burst into full blown sobs. She was not sobbing for what she had been earlier, though.

"Severa, please… If we have married under false pretenses, I won't object to an annulment. I'll even deny taking your virtue, so you can remarry without shame… I did not realize how much a family meant to you, and I would never wish to hurt you." Gerome's voice was pleading at this point.

Severa had heard enough. She did the only thing she could think to do. She jumped across the bed, wrapped her arms around Gerome and squeezed him for all she was worth. Their still naked bodies clasped to each other, she sobbed into the gap between his muscular shoulder and his neck. She felt him sob against her hair, and realized that she was probably giving him the wrong idea. She could not let _that_ happen now.

"Gerome, you can be so daft at times," Severa managed between her rapidly calming sobs. She managed a wet smile as she pulled her head up and pushed his face right in front of hers, locking eyes.

His eyes were really confused now. That was better than how they were before. She decided to explain.

"That was the first time you said you loved me, Gerome." Severa said softly. His eyes were beautiful this close. She would have to look at them more, later.

"Severa… what? At our wedding, I–"

She cut him off. "Dummy, at our wedding you said 'I do.' Saying you agree with a blonde sissy-boy isn't nearly as important as saying the words yourself." She gave him a soft smile as understanding dawned on his face.

He kissed her, and it felt wonderful, and she – broke away quickly, before she let herself be distracted.

"Gerome, stop, we have plenty of time for that later, but we really need to set some things straight." His grunt of a response bellied the fear she could see creep back in to his eyes, so she decided to put him out of his misery.

"I love you to, _masked avenger-man_, and that's not going to change for anything. But we are really going to have to work on opening up to each other if this is going to work. I know I'm not exactly honest about how I feel most of the time, but you are _not_ winning any awards for emotional availability any time soon either. Even though you aren't physically wearing your mask around me anymore, you seem to think that you don't have to tell me when you are having some existential crisis. Especially one that is not even founded in reality." She managed to keep any smugness out of her voice until the last sentence. It was not that she meant to put it there; she just could not help it.

"What is that supposed to mean?" was Gerome's terse response. He seemed a little upset again. Severa really needed better control of her intonation.

"It's simple. Let's take a look at the facts. Which one of us kids got here first?" she asked as calmly as she could.

"Lucina, of course. And then Cynthia, not long after Chrom and Sumia were wed." Gerome replied, still a bit confused.

"Exactly. In other words, before Chrom had even started his romance with Sumia, Lucina was here in this world with no problems. And Cynthia ended up here about the same time, just not in the same place. She got side tracked for two years thinking some gawds-awful bandit was _Chrom_ of all people." Severa could see the thoughts beginning to coalesce inside Gerome's mind through his beautiful eyes. She loved his analytical mind, but she knew that she could convince him. She was at least as smart as he was, and he would be the only one to figure it out. Apart from her _genius_ mother, of course.

"In other words, you see this as proof that our existences are pre-determined, regardless of how we affect this world by our presence." Gerome said, still with some doubt in his voice. He would need more convincing.

"Yeah, pretty much. If you want more proof, look at Laurent. He was here five years before everyone else somehow, and for the majority of that time his parents had never even _met_. They only happened to find him after they were married, but it's not like he didn't exist until then." She smirked at him, and could not help herself as she settled into his naked lap a little bit more.

"You were so sure of your 'causality' theory that you never bothered to notice that the world didn't seem to care. And if our experiences at the Outrealm Gate in that even _worse_ future are any indication, time traveling seems to create a whole new world instead of keeping us in one loop. Therefore, we are just as much a part of this world as our parents are, or our children will be." She punctuated this last statement of her proof with a steaming kiss to his lips.

Severa could feel his hesitance, and then after what might have been an audible mental 'click' from Gerome, she found herself on her back starring into exited eyes with a throbbing warmth touching her thigh.

"Severa, I know it might be a bit late to ask, but what do you think about children?" Gerome asked her gently as he entered her.

"I've always wanted to be a mother. Or at least, a better one than mine was to me…" Severa said, trying not to moan as she said it. She was already excited again, and was glad to note that the pain wasn't nearly as bad this time. Hopefully it would keep diminishing.

"Then what do you say we give it our best effort, my love?"

And they did. Afterwards, as they were holding each other and drifting closer to sleep, a Severa finally felt the right combination of trust and lack of inhibition to bring up something very personal to her. After all, they had agreed to be more open with each other…

"Hey, Gerome… You know how I was always bugging you about your mask?" she asked, and couldn't help but sound a little timid. After all of the crap she had given him, this was going to be _so_ embarrassing.

"Mm, what about it?" Gerome replied, his voice now perfectly calm, but in a far more tranquil way than she had ever heard it before.

"Well… I wouldn't mind if you put it back on, every once in a while, when we…" Severa stopped. She just could not finish her sentence. She now knew how Olivia must feel when she blushed this hard. She looked at Gerome to make sure he understood.

To her relief, he was probably blushing more than she was. But then he simply smirked and pulled her closer to his chest.

"And you thought my reason for liking it was lame… If only the others knew." Severa paled on hearing Gerome's words.

"You wouldn't dare!" she shouted, although this time far more teasingly.

* * *

A/N: Thank you very much for reading! I would appreciate any and all critiques, especially constructive criticism. If you would like a response, the easiest way to contact me is by PM. Please review!


End file.
